Fake I.D

Fake I.D is currently in its tenth year and was created by Yvan Martinez and Joshua Trees. They originate from Los Angeles and have worked in London and San Francisco and there work has been displayed in Museum of Modern Art in New York and London. Joshua's background is in Graphic design and says the school he attended was very techincal and at the end of the course he didnt feel confident with his abilities. He then went on to do an MA in fine arts and explored the issue of 'the line between art and life disappearing'. Trees met Martinez in San Fransisco in a performance art group and then went on to form there first group CCSIS (creative community seriously I swear). Martinez studied Mathematics to MA level in Venezuela.

above 'Placas'

They try to draw a line between commercial and independent work, but approach both in the same manner. They find that there independent work attracts companies (which has lead them to work with such companies as MTV, NIKE and Urban Outfitters). They say working with such big clients is like 'Freedom within a Cage'.

They are both interested in sound and narration at the moment and working within schools. They like to work in schools as you can still experiment in this environment. They see schools as a sight of production - 'School can be a productive force rather than a training ground'. They say they dont see students as students but see them as partners. They say there most interesting work has been with collaborations with students.


above 'Books from the future'

They say that is is always important to 'make' without being asked, and to be constantly experimenting.

I found this lecture really interesting and i was intrigued to see such detailed experimentation into communication. This is a subject I feel I could become really interested in and would like to look at it further. Possibly through some animation work. Here is the lecture, though it is quite difficult to type exactly what happened ...

'Language'

They showed how a Portuguese man was able to learn English from a bizarre combination of Data from Star Trek and the character Rosanne. The character of Data is an android and is unable to show any emotion and unable to use contractions. The character of Rosanne, from my perspective, has a very strong American accent and is very stereotypical of an American (but thats only from my point of view). Through watching these two character on t.v, the portugese man created his own version of the American Language, which they called 'RosAndroid'.

I found this interesting as to me they are trying to show the impact of populer culture on this mans belief of the American language, he learnt a disjointed version from these two T.V shows. Its trying to show the mutation of language ... I think.

'Sound'
They talked about Tony Schwartz who was an American archivist. In this section they played a clip from 'The Sound of Lettering' which was clips of the sound of pencil on paper or the sound of a type writer.

'This is the way my typing sounds'

This to me was a way of showing another way of communicating words, through the 'sound' words make and the process' we use to create them. Showing 'The similarity of letters and sounds'

they played clips of interviews with Ben Shahn, who im quite interested in. They also quoted, or it was the title for something - 'In the Begging there was the word'. I know this to be from a passage in the Bible but I think it may be Ben Shahn who used it in one of the Interview clips.

They also played clips of a child sounding out letters. This i think is a very interesting investigation into communication and the way we process words and then how we communicate them...

They showed a Burger Chef commercial and examples of the fast food packaging. Then they played a sample recording of 'Fangburgers haunted hotel', which was a free gift in the meal.

'Text'

'Breaking the Forth wall' is the moment that you get through to the audience.

they talked about Ernie Kovacs who was an American comedian who experimented visually with his comic style. They showed the credits to one of His shows (below). (I loved the experimental credits and have made me even more eager to try out animation)



They showed images from a television program 'Tell me' which was a peformance of abstraction which showed the relationship between what was seen and heard.

Placas. a placa is a style of graffiti which is the sign of a gang. Each gang will write over each other placa to instigate a fight/confrontation. They were showing us how these gangs use walls to communicate.

'Noise'

Talked about a gang called WLTF who communicate through radio, posters etc.

They played clips of the radio show. - 'New communism is new capitalism... this is the new order.'

'LSTN'

This is a language, sound, text and noise workshops that FAKEID run. They played us clips from this workshop which were conversations with 'Outsiders'. The interview we listened to was from a man who was attracted to female amputees, in which he talks about where he believed his attraction started (with his female teacher who was an amputee)about Rosa Petra (famous female amputee) and his life living with this obsession.

They then talked about information theory, about how information travels from A-B without errors.

They ended the lecture by playing holding music and asking us to 'Please Hold', which we all did.

Which to me shows how willingly we are to except words without question.